Pro-Business or Pro-Market?

There is a big difference. The GOP can’t have it both ways anymore. The Grand Old Party would be ever so much grander if they’d shutter the rents dispensary (well, and a few other roles they favor for big government). Dolling out favors to politically-connected business elites really douses my libertarian lamp. That includes bailouts and escapades into regulation that only business behemoths can withstand.

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun